Climategate, the 2009 exposure of misconduct at the University of East Anglia, was a terrible blow to the reputation of climatology, and indeed to that of British and American science. Although that story hasn’t been in the news in recent months, new evidence of similar scientific wrongdoing continues to emerge, with a new scandal hitting the climate blogosphere just a few days ago.

And central to the newest story is one of the Climategate scientists: Keith Briffa, an expert in reconstructing historical temperature records from tree rings. More particularly, the recent scandal involves a tree-ring record Briffa prepared for a remote area of northern Russia called Yamal.

For many years, scientists have used tree-ring data to try to measure temperatures from the distant past, but the idea is problematic in and of itself. Why? Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on. But let’s pretend, if only for the sake of argument, that we can reliably determine the mean temperature 1,000 years ago or more using tree cores from a remote part of Russia. The central issue that emerges is: How do you choose the trees?

It was the way Briffa picked the trees to include in his analysis that piqued the interest of Steve McIntyre, a maverick amateur climatologist from Canada. The Climategate e-mails make it clear that McIntyre earned the public scorn of the most powerful U.N. climatologists, including James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Phil Jones, while simultaneously earning their fear and respect in private.

McIntyre noticed a few problems with the way Briffa chose the sampling of Russian trees, and he wrote to Briffa requesting the data Briffa used in a published tree-ring paper. Briffa declined. And so began a four-year saga involving multiple peer-reviewed journals, behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Briffa and his closest confidants, and a Freedom of Information Act request on the part of McIntyre that appears to be on the verge of being granted. Even without the final set of data, however, McIntyre has shown beyond the shadow of doubt that Briffa may have committed one of the worst sins, if not the worst, in climatology — that of cherry-picking data — when he assembled his data sample, which his clique of like-minded and very powerful peers have also used in paper after paper.

It was already known that the Yamal series contained a preposterously small amount of data. This by itself raised many questions: Why did Briffa include only half the number of cores covering the balmy interval known as the Medieval Warm Period that another scientist, one with whom he was acquainted, had reported for Yamal? And why were there so few cores in Briffa’s 20th century? By 1988, there were only twelve cores used in a year, an amazingly small number from the period that should have provided the easiest data. By 1990, the count was only ten, and it dropped to just five in 1995. Without an explanation of how the strange sampling of the available data had been performed, the suspicion of cherry-picking became overwhelming, particularly since the sharp 20th-century uptick in the series was almost entirely due to a single tree.

The 1990 ten core data set. See core YAD061, shown in yellow highlight, the single most influential tree in the world.

The intrigue deepened when one of the Climategate e-mails revealed that, as far back as 2006, Briffa had prepared a much more broadly based, and therefore more reliable, tree-ring record of the Yamal area. But strangely, he had decided to set this aside in favor of the much narrower record he eventually used.

The question of Yamal had rightly come up when Briffa was questioned by Climategate investigators. He told them that he had never considered including a wider sample than the one he went with in the end, and hadn’t had enough time to include a wider one. However, the specific issue of the suppressed record appears to have largely been passed over by the panel, and Briffa’s explanation, like so many others given to the Climategate inquiries, appears to have been accepted without question.

But the ruse has now been shot to pieces, by the recent decision from the U.K.’s information commissioner that Briffa can no longer withhold the list of sites he used in his suppressed regional record for the Yamal area. The disclosure of these sites has allowed McIntyre to calculate what the broad series would have looked like if Briffa had chosen to publish it. He has shown that it has no hint of the hockey-stick shape that Briffa’s cherry-picked data indicated.

McIntyre’s latest plot. In red, the original cherry picked series, showing a hockey stick shape, in green, the updated series with more data, showing no such shape.

Briffa’s decision to publish an alarming but unreliable version of the Yamal series — instead of a more reliable and thoroughly unremarkable one — has been the talk of the climate blogosphere, with many prominent commentators openly speaking of dishonesty.

Two and a half years after the initial revelation of the Climategate e-mails, new controversies, on the part of the scientists and the investigators involved, continue to emerge. Many of the players involved are desperate to sweep the scandal under the rug. However, their machinations have only succeeded in bringing renewed attention to their questionable science and ugly behind-the-scenes shenanigans, reigniting hope that more complete and more independent investigations — on both sides of the Atlantic — will yet be performed.

223 thoughts on “The sum of Yamal is greater than its parts”

If this FOI does come through and the facts are, indeed, as McIntyre has shown above; then the next question is: How much of climate research is based on Biffra’s data? Wouldn’t it just about invalidate every pro-AGW study since most, if not all, are based on Biffra’s trees or on studies that rely on Biffra’s trees?

Don’t know whether to suggest sticky post anymore as this story will surely be developing rapidly but still the most important event that will actually initiate legal restitution by aggrieved persons/corporations/governments for losses.

I’m not posing this as an argument for authority, I am merely pointing out that numerous notable, knowledgeable, credible authorities on climate and statistics have been vocally calling these people out. And the mainstream media has all but absolutely ignored anything but climate alarmist clap trap.

“By 1988, there were only twelve cores used in a year, an amazingly small number from the period that should have provided the easiest data. By 1990, the count was only ten, and it dropped to just five in 1995.”

Any of GW climatologists who knew of the “preposterously small amount of data” used by Briffa, thus the flagrant dishonesty, and used Briffa’s work as basis for claiming Global Warming was settled science; they should end up facing prosecution for Fraud [SNIP: rather Over the top and likely to be misinterpreted. -REP] let them be reminded it is they who screamed the dire nature of GW, demanded drastic actions / changes, soaked us for billions of dollars, and have called for GW non-believers to be tried for crimes against humanity.

Warmists don’t really care if all of the hockey sticks are falsified. The core faith is that “obviously climate change is real”. They don’t want or need any science because the “truth” is already known to them. They desperately want to silence anyone who tries to prove otherwise, not because it would destroy THE world, but because it would destroy THEIR world.

YAD061, that’s the liar. And beside the Yamal trees I have a question. Why were all trees I read mentioned of Mann’s paper all from Russia? Where did Mann & Briffa use Australian trees, Brazilian trees, Spanish trees, British trees, African trees, Indian trees in his global reconstruction? They all seem from various regions of Russia but i do remember a brief mention of some trees (bristle cone?) included from the abouts of Boulder Colorado (curiously the radical-left cluster in central America).

Russia’s government’s famous pledge… We will bury America from within.

My favorite cartoon of all time, from memory (if someone can find it, I would be grateful), is Ziggy, facing 3 vending machines. The one on the left says “Truth, twenty five cents” (or some such), the one in the middle says “The Whole Truth, 50 cents” (or some such), and the one on the right says “The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth, a buck” (or some such).

I’m working from memory here, but I seem to recall another problem with Briffa’s Yamal series: it tracked pretty well with the so-called “average global surface temperature”, but not with the trees’ local temperature records. WUWT?

Indeed. Without the integrity and tireless diligence of a relative small number of motivated and highly skilled volunteer ~auditors~, including Watts, McIntyre, McKitrick, and others to numerous to grant their worthwhile recognition here in this small space, the world may have been fooled into undue fear and damaging action by a cliche of like minded charlatan purveyors of mischievous pseudo science, presented as facts.

Thank you to all the hard working volunteer ~auditors~. Our debt of gratitude is so immeasurable there’s no doubt it my mind that it can never be fully repaid.

Lucy Skywalker did an excellent study of the local thermometer records against the tree ring proxy data here at WUWT a couple of years ago, I reposted it in response to Steve McIntyre’s recent revelations:http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/6355/

Nice post, thank you. I suppose this fraud will continue as long as the leftists in control of the media want it to continue, and this will be as long as the crooked scientists and their crooked politicians can obtain power and money from the fraud.

Any gardener knows that plants need optimum conditions to thrive. And if we leave aside all factors other than temperature, we know that if it is too cold, the plant won’t thrive – narrow tree rings. If temperatures are optimal, the plant thrives, and the tree rings are thick. If it is too hot, the plant won’t thrive resulting in narrow tree rings again. The technical term for this behaviour is that tree ring width has an inverse quadratic response to temperature.

Here’s the thing. While anybody who has done any gardening knows this, apparently climate scientists like Keith Briffa and Michael Mann don’t. They insist that the relationship between tree ring thickness and temperature is LINEAR. That is, narrow rings indicate low temperatures. Wide rings indicate high temperatures. Seriously. That is what they do. And they expect us to believe them and to treat them with the respect to which they think they are due.

I have reposted this in the original form at Weatherzone as the resident trolls continue to bleat about how unfair your blog is and any reference to WUWT is immediately pooh poohed as anti warmist trash talk. Guess this might shut one or two up now..
And yes something smells very rotten to me.

Just for fun I googled around and learned that real hockey sticks – the kind used by Wayne Gretzky et al – were originally made from ONE tree, but NOW they use many. Too bad the warmist fear merchants did not follow that example. Check it out:

Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on.
—————
I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.

lazyteenager;
I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.>>>>

Could you please describe the conditions and/or evolution that would result in a tree being insensitive to changes in precipitation? Pestilence? Disease? Animals foraging? Late frost?

And also, could you explain how the sensistivity to winter temperatures is incorporated into the tree rings?

Indeed this is the case, but they do not avoid these issues they merely attempt to select trees that minimise rhe extraneous influences. The problem being that since we are talking about historical data no one can know if temperature is the ONLY influence even at these trees (usually on the tree line). The much bigger issue however is the selection of trees in your analysis. Any statistician will tell you that in doing your survey you either sample all the trees at the location of interest, which is usually not possible,or you take a random sample. What you do not do as a scientist is randomly sample the trees, analyse the data and then select only those trees that give you the “right” answer.

There has been no explanation from the scientists on this team as to why YAD061 was uniquely selected out of all the other trees in that area to build the chronology, and therefore the supposition must be, in the absence of any other plausible explanation, that it was because it was the only one that gave the right answer.

If you are a climate scientist and having difficulty with this: imagine a drug trial in which 10% of the cohort died from side effects, 89% showed no change and 1% were cured. If the drug company based its FDA submission on the 1% (ignoring the other 99%) would you think this was a) sensible b) understandable or c) fraudulent

LazyTeenager, if that’s the case, which it is, then the main core of the methodology (and analysis/discussion) made out by Briffa should have dealt with such matters. If I understand Muntford (and McIntyre) correctly, Briffa holds his cards rather close to his chest in that respect.

Andrew – “the most important event that will actually initiate legal restitution by aggrieved persons/corporations/governments for losses

Wholeheartedly agree!

Perhaps some of the very knowledgeable and astute readers can help us understand what the linkage back to these debunked statements are, and how the policy decisions, and other generally fraudulent transaction that lead on from them can be attacked?

It seems to me that hurting them in the pocket is a direct response to them lining them in the first place. Any comments?

@lazyteenager “Geographically situated”? LMAO!! Man, were YOU sold a bill of goods…. He he he he… Now, I know that you are a LAZY teenager, but you should consider changing your nom-de-plume to CRAZY teenager, because if you really think that humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness and MORE can be CHOSEN, you are some kind of nut. Are your heroes Tree Whisperers? heh.

the MSM, including the CAGW gatekeepers, Revkin, Black et al, have all ignored the entire McIntyre/Yamal revelations. even people with no scientific education like me are now able to at least partly grasp the meaning and importance of McIntyre’s analyses.

Bish – and his humourful offsider Josh – have helped in the translation. many thanx as ever to WUWT and all who participate in this investigation of a malicious, nihilistic, scientific hoax, whose very name – CAGW – is taboo in scientific, political and mainstream media circles.

‘I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.’

That idea is part of the supposed theoretical basis of dendroclimatology.

But (like so much of climatology) it has never been experimentally shown to be the case. It is simply a matter of faith.

It is a difficult argument to make that an individual tree, purely by virtue of its geographical position, will somehow lose all its genetic capability to respond to all the other variables that are otherwise strong influences apart from temperature. It’s an even harder argument to make that, even if the former were true that the tree growth would exactly match – and be determined in exactly the same way as – the climatologists choose to calculate average temperature.

WRT your disobliging comment about Montford..(with a ‘d’, not a ‘t’)

Is Montfort unaware if this or is he just being sneaky?

It might help if you arose from your lethargy and read his next sentence. Whether the tree rings respond as claimed or not is not the central point of the narrative. How only a very small amount of the available data was chosen to be used…thereby overemphasising the contribution of one single anomalous tree.

Montford knows this stuff very well…you can read his excellent book ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’ for a thorough and scholarly exposition of dendroclimatology and the whole sad and shabby story of the HS saga of which the Yamal controversy is a part.

And it is the fact of the anomalous behaviour of the tree in question (see graphs above) that shows that the idea of position leading to only a temperature influence is at best an over-simplification. Because whatever it is that YAD061 is responding to..it is not the same as its near neighbours. It cannot be temperature alone.

And on a purely anecdotal level I note that the recent few days of warm weather in SE England have produced bounteous growth in my garden…trees included. But it is the six weeks of pouring rain that preceded the last three days that have had just as much influence as the temperature today.

Some of the Climategate emails are worth reading agin here. Remember, you can search for Climategate grepper then enter the email number.
1483.txt
date: Mon Nov 3 18:28:04 1997
from: Keith Briffa
to: Tom Wigley
thanks for the info. Actually this is a chance for me to to mention that we have for the last few months at least, been reworking the idea of looking in the Schweingruber network data for evidence of increasing tree growth and hence ,potentially at least, evidence of changing tree(read biomass) uptake of carbon.
The results are dramatic – not to say earth shattering because they demonstrate major time-dependent changes – but changes that are consistent in different areas of the network. We have regionalised over 350 site collections , each with ring width and density data , age-banded the data so that we look only at relative growth in similar ages of trees through time and recombined the standardisd curves to produce growth changes in each region. Basically growth is roughly constant (except for relatively small climate variablity forcing) from 1700 to about 1850. It then increases linearly by about up until about 1950 after which time young ( up to 50 year old) basal area explodes but older trees remain constant . The implication is a major increase in carbon uptake before the mid 20th century – temperatue no doubt partly to blame but much more likely to be nitrate/Co2 . Equally important though is the levelling off of carbon uptake in the later 20th century. This levelling is coincident with the start of a density decline – we have a paper coming out in Nature documenting the decline . In relative terms (i.e. by comparison with increasing summer temperatures) the decline is represented in the ring width and basal area data as a levelling off in the long-timescale inrease ( which you only see when you process the data as we have). The density data do not show the increase over and above what you expect from temperature forcing.
I have been agonising for months that these results are not some statistical artifact of the analysis method but we can’t see how. For just two species (spruce in the western U.S. Great Basin area and larch in eastern Siberia) we can push the method far enough to get an indication of much longer term growth changes ( from about 1400) and the results confirm a late 20th century apparent fertilization! The method requires standardizing (localized mean subtraction and standard deviation division) by species/age band so we reconstruct relative (e.g. per cent change) only .
We have experimented with integrating the different signals in basal area and density(after extracting intra ring ring width and density data where available) within a ‘flat mass’ measure which shows a general late 20th century increase – but whether this incorporates a defensible relative waiting on the different components (and what the relative carbon components are) is debatable. We now need to make some horrible simplistic assumptions about absolute carbon in these (relatively small) components of the total biomass carbon pool and imlpications for terrestrial and total carbon fluxes over the last few hundred years – and beyond! Without these implications we will have difficulty convincing Nature that this work is mega important.
There are problems with explaining and interpreting these data but they are by far the best produced for assessing large scale carbon-cycle-relevant vegetation changes – at least as regards well-dated continous trends. I will send you a couple of Figures ( a tiny sample of the literally hundreds we have) which illustrate some of this. I would appreciate your reaction. Obviously this stuff is very hush hush till I get a couple of papers written up on this. We are looking at a moisture sensive network of data at the moment to see if any similar results are produced when non-temperature-sensitive data are used. You would expect perhaps a greater effect in such data if Co2 acts on the water use efficiency .
……………………………………
Tom Wigley was having trouble with the troops at this time. Read the whole of this one – just a para given here from 0880476729.txt
“When scientists color the science with their own PERSONAL views or make
categorical statements without presenting the evidence for such
statements, they have a clear responsibility to state that that is what
they are doing. You have failed to do so. Indeed, what you are doing is,
in my view, a form of dishonesty more subtle but no less egregious than
the statements made by the greenhouse skeptics, Michaels, Singer et al. I
find this extremely disturbing.
Tom Wigley”
He was writing to a team of 11, which was mainly of germanic origin with a couple of anglosaxon acolytes, under the header “Invitation to Influence Kyoto”.
Jan Goudriaan, Hartmut Grassl, Klaus Hasselmann, Jill Jäger, Hans Opschoor, Tim O’Riordan, Martin Parry, David Pearce, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Seiler, Pier Vellinga.

I visited the library of our local Norman Cathedral last week in order to research original material fior an article i am writing on the 13th and 14th century climate in England.

I was intrigued by the tree ring report I saw dated 1999. Detailed below are my notes on this;

“Tree rings-Saw two reports from a Government organisation undated but probably from around 1999/2000

Tree rings in Cathedral to be dated and measured against English template from Midlands dated from 882 to 1810. Two graphs drawn. Earliest records 1810-low and 1820 high. Great peaks-favourable weather around 1825 to 1855

Low points around 1860. Similar sets of peaks 1875 to 1890. Little variation from then until the last record taken from trees around 1975. (see my hand drawn graph)

All above taken from timbers from Law library and 2 other cathedral buildings. Similar set taken from timbers of Archdeacons house dates from 1186 to 1404. The report seems primarily concerned with dating of timbers but mentions broad and narrow rings as representing climatic conditions-but notes younger trees such as oaks grow differently to older ones and that local conditions affect them greatly.

Also depends on growing season-April to October here but differs elsewhere. Good growing seasons have relatively wide rings, poor growing seasons have very narrow rings and average rings in average years. Accurate to around 40 years.
See books ‘Tree ring dating and archaeology (bailie 1982) or ‘A slice through time’ (bailie 1995)

Obviously at that time tree rings were considered primarily as a tool for dating timbers and the climatic information was secondary and imprecise.”
Notes End

I had always been under the impression that tree rings were intended primarily for dating but could give some general pointers on the generalties of a growing season such as the moisture levels.The date of the report-from a quasi Government Agency dovetails with the timing of MBH98 which catapulted tree rings into a sphere they were never intended to inhabit-that of being a temperature proxy accurate to fractions of a degree.

Whether this promotion to the top league of science was solely precipitated by the Hockey stick/IPCC reports or whether there had been a general growing tendancy to use tree rings beyond their original purpose of dating, perhaps someone here has the background knowledge to tell me.

LazyTeenager says:
May 24, 2012 at 11:12 pm
“I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.”

Aside from the difficulty in finding a tree that doesn’t respond to changes in water and nutrient supply there is an obvious error in your impression.
One tree is very different from the others. Therefore either:
1 These trees are not indicative of temperature over their region and so certainly can’t be extrapolated over the world.
or
2 There were chosen for the exact opposite reason than the one you thought.

Personally, I suspect the one tree that grew more than the others was the benficiary of an ursine nutrient deposit and that Briffa is lacks the technical expertise that permits an understanding of the probability of such an event.

This information is so important. Not just for putting the record straight but for proving CAGW is purely a political card to tax and control. This should be bread and butter to the MSM, they love a good tear-down political story. So where the F*** are they? I know there are some reporters out there doing their best. The rest of them need a good kick in the pants.

Keith (One Tree) Briffa. I wonder he still has a job. Other Climategate Emails showed that Briffa did not collect the data himself but relied on some Russian scientists to do the tree cores. I believe they were concerned that such a small sample of their data set was used.

Above “Don’t know whether to suggest sticky post anymore as this story will surely be developing rapidly but still the most important (concrete) event that will actually (be able to) initiate legal restitution by aggrieved persons/corporations/governments for losses”

This is why MSM won’t touch it, especially Revkin etc.(although RC has commented I must say)

The first comment on this post by Rhoda R sums up the fundamental issue:
Virtually the entire AGW or ACC scientific basis is flawed because the basics are flawed, and seriously flawed.

As an analogy, computer systems depend on the lowest level and build on it (ie. hardware interface, I/O, graphics cards, etc.). I write code in a high-level language that depends on the function and security of the low-level code. If there is a flaw in the low level code then all the work I put into the high level stuff will fall apart. But low-level computer code can be fixed, which would likely not break the high level code.

The difference between something like computer programming or other engineering endeavors as opposed to climate “science” is that they can’t “fix” the fundamental low-level flaws without completely starting over. In engineering you can trace back all of your steps and test each section separately, however with theory you have to build your new theories on old ones. If all the intermediate steps were testable and verifiable, fine. However, in climate “science” the earliest steps are flawed, and a group of people are obfuscating the flaws and actively defending against the discovery of the problems.

Simply repairing the hockey stick flaws will not make everything that has been done since then suddenly work, because repairing the Yamal problem makes the entire theory (hypothesis, conjecture, whatever) disappear. All of the work done since would be shown to be faulty and incorrect. An obvious analogy at this point would be the work done on Piltdown Man… where is it today? It too was based on flawed initial work, or in that case, fabricated. Take away the base and the entire house of cards collapses. And don’t kid yourself, theoretical sciences ARE houses of cards.

People who actually care about Science with a capital S are more concerned about getting it right than their personal beliefs, passions, and environmental or political wishes. This is why so many of “us” are incensed by the entire Yamal and hockey stick debacle.

Maybe human emissions of CO2 are harmful, maybe they’re not. Those who believe they are can only argue from faith, because the “science” has been shown quite convincingly to be fundamentally flawed, and therefore useless.

Mann and Briffa believe they are unfairly targeted by “skeptics”, and that is their basic problem. All anyone is asking for is the same kind of proofs and transparency that would be expected in any other scientific endeavor, and that has not been forthcoming, in fact it has been evaded and stonewalled.

I am a “skeptic”, but not by choice. Again, I started my own investigation into AGW with the belief that we were harming our planet. However, my search for convincing evidence turned up nothing credible, and much that is NOT credible. And yeah, I’m FURIOUS at the Yamal issue, because it has seriously damaged the public’s faith in Science, and will continue to do so until it is resolved.

Also depends on growing season-April to October here but differs elsewhere. Good growing seasons have relatively wide rings, poor growing seasons have very narrow rings and average rings in average years. Accurate to around 40 years.
See books ‘Tree ring dating and archaeology (bailie 1982) or ‘A slice through time’ (bailie 1995) ”

Exactly.

That’s why I don’t take much credence in tree thermometers.
Having spent over 15 yrs of my early working life in Horticulture and a further 2 years in Forestry.

You can get a whole block of trees, of the same type, and of the same age. Once that block of trees has been felled. You can see a fairly large variation in the tree rings.

You’ll see a mixture of wide and narrow tree rings right through out a block. Some trees can be a lot healthier and faster growing than others. Depending on a number of factors including:

LazyTeenager says:
May 24, 2012 at 11:12 pm
I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.

You are under a mistaken impression.

Is Montfort unaware if this or is he just being sneaky?

You are also under the mistaken impression that Montfort performed Steve McIntyre’s analysis rather than writing an article commenting on it.

I wouldn’t call Steve McIntyre a “maverick climatologist”. I’d call him an experienced statistical analyst and refer to the Hockey Team as “non-statisticians” and “deeply conflicted amateur propagandists”

Lazy Teenager – welcome back, not seen you around much lately – missed the laughs.

Perhaps you should brush up on your reading skills – you must have missed this bit –
“But let’s pretend, if only for the sake of argument, that we can reliably determine the mean temperature 1,000 years ago or more using tree cores from a remote part of Russia. The central issue that emerges is: How do you choose the trees?”

Then have a look at the graphs – do you notice an odd one out? That should give you a clue as to what the post is about,. It is independent of the question of the accuracy of trees (from any location) as thermometers.

Conveying to people who don’t read climate blogs every day what is unfolding in the realm of climate science is an acute challenge. That is one reason that I was so pleased that Andrew, with his acknowledged gifts, said yes to my request that we put this piece together. It is our agreed-upon belief that right now constitutes an important turning point for Steve McIntyre specifically and climate science generally, and this guided us in our writing.

Okay, for those of us who don’t have a background in statistics, can someone (briefly) explain why this one tree would even be included in the data sample as it appears to be an outlier; and, given that it was included, how could one sample have such a large impact on the results? Shouldn’t the statistical tools eliminate or mitigate the impact of such outliers?

Steve and Lucia have both shown that if you generate random data but with the same autoregression as tree ring data and select data which matches the recent temperature rise you get a **ckeyStick. This does not, of course, prove that if tree ring data produces a **ckeyStick the data are random. What would clinch it for dendroclimatology would be if the tree rings selected for their correlation with recent temperature were more strongly correlated with each than with the rejected tree rings. Does anyone know if this has been done?

LazyTeenager:I was under the impression that [the trees were selected from magical places that only experience variances in temperature]…Is Montfort unaware if this or is he just being sneaky?
– – – – – – – – – –
Why should Montford be aware of your post-normal impressions? (That was a week before the floods)

Casting my eye over the ten graphs presented, it looks to me that there is some small correlation in POR051/081/111 and YAD121….but YAD061 stands on its own showing a steep rise after 1975(ish). Had others in the series shown a similar effect, we can be sure they would have been icluded. The fact that ONLY YAD061 shows a steep rise and merging the others doesn’t, tells me that this was deliberately selected to ‘prove’ Mann’s hockey stick.

The very public exposing of these shenanigans can’t happen quickly enough. The US EPA has officially identified CO2 as a pollutant and is actively working on regulating it. The ramifications are enormous, immediate, and deadly. When the wealth of nations is used to tilt at wind mills, other priorities are neglected.

I’m not posing this as an argument for authority, I am merely pointing out that numerous notable, knowledgeable, credible authorities on climate and statistics have been vocally calling these people out. And the mainstream media has all but absolutely ignored anything but climate alarmist clap trap.

But the problem really isn’t the media. The problem is the folks that sign the checks that fund this kind of useless dreck. It’s quite obvious that there is no accountability in the federal funding of research grants. These charlatan “climate scientists” are merely gaming the system, and gaming the system quite well, I might add.
They are merely placating the desires of politicians who have friends and family who can make million, if not billions, of dollars from programs to contain a problem that is uncontainable, if it even exists at all. If there were no money involved, this would all end before you stop reading my comments.

Does this mean that Australia’s Carbon Dioxide Tax will not need to be introduced after all?…
___________________________________
Since when has any politician ever back tracked? Once a law is passed it is cast in stone especially if it is a tax. Think of the major amount of upheaval and crime caused by US Prohibition. The law, abolishing alcohol manufacture, was in force from 1920 to 1933. The Federal Government bureaucratic machine put in place to deal with the “crimes” committed is STILL with us today.

The original Bureau of Prohibition ultimately evolved into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) was a branch of the Treasury. It has moved from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice to a branch of the FBI back to the Treasury Department and now has been transferred to Homeland Security and is infamous for the fiasco called “Fast and Furious”

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

And that quote is not from Fox news but CBS.

So never expect a bureaucracy (or tax) once in place to ever disappear. It might happen but don’t bet on it.

LazyTeenager says:
May 24, 2012 at 11:12 pm
I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.
========
No, that is not the case. The trees were chosen because they had a high correlation with average GLOBAL temperature as calculated from thermometers. The argument being that this made then a good proxy for average global temperatures prior to thermometer data.

However, these same trees do not correlate well with average REGIONAL temperatures in the place where they grow. This is strong evidence that the trees are not correlated with temperature at all, that they match the global average simply because of chance.

As such, all the climate papers that have been published that are based on this methodology are suspect. This is a huge number of papers affecting a large number of climate scientists. They are fighting tooth and nail over this issue because it could well end a number of scientific careers.

@lazy teenager… I moved to Maryland in ’09. If I wanted to know what the temperature was like here in ’99, which trees in my backyard would I take cores from? Likewise, if I wanted to know the WORLD WIDE TEMPERATURE 600 YEARS AGO… where should I start coring?

The question you should be asking is: “Why did YAD061 — after 150 years of stagnant growth — suddenly have a sudden surge when the trees around it did not?” Clearly, it would seem that something OTHER than temperature was the cause. For me, it seems likely YAD061 had been growing in the shadow of another tree for 150 years, and when that tree died and fell over, YAD061 suddenly got better growing conditions. If anything, YAD061 should have been eliminated from the study as an outlier.

I find that this is all terriby discouraging. We seem to have man made global warming because the data is being manipulated by men.

I have read, quite consistenly, about data being manipulated repeatedly, and it seems to always fit the needs of the ‘team’. Being sceptical of sceptics, is there a source that has concentrated its efforts on documenting raw data, adjusted data, the source of the adjustments and the reasoning behind the adjustments?

If that existed, perhaps it would focus the message sceptics are trying to push.

Ex. Today (May 22nd 2012) at JoNova they found that the raw satellite data for sea level rise has been adjusted.

Has there even been a case of adjustment that goes against the ‘team’? I have not heard of any, but surely it must exist somewhere?

MattN says:
May 25, 2012 at 3:46 am
Just because you don’t like the data, you don’t get to ignore it as “invalid”.
======
It appears mann et al solved that problem. They labelled the data “censored” instead. Not really invalid at all, simply hidden. The decline then became an incline.http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2009/11/censored-folder.html

Where are the lawsuits? If British Industry that paid for carbon offsets were to band together and sue the government and Briffa et al, for billions in fees paid out on fraudulent science.. would that not bring the issue to a head? The process of discovery, getting at the very basis of the goverment decisions(science used), should be enlightening.

“Okay, for those of us who don’t have a background in statistics, can someone (briefly) explain why this one tree would even be included in the data sample as it appears to be an outlier; ”

Certainly. As Lazy Teenager has explained, this tree – and this tree alone – fits all the criteria for accurately reflecting the true temperature record, unspoilt by all the other contradictory factors mentioned in the article.

Now, why didn’t Briffa just say that when asked why he never used a larger sample?

GogogoStopSTOP says:
May 25, 2012 at 6:54 am
If I wanted to know what the temperature was like here in ’99, which trees in my backyard would I take cores from?
====
You wouldn’t take them from trees unless you were sure that the tree species used C4 photosynthesis. Unlikely, because most of the plants in the world are C3 and the grow fastest in the spring when moisture is plentiful, not in the summer when temperatures are higher.

Look at your garden. In the NH it is spring and most of the trees will have already grown noticeably since winter. They will grow very little more as summer progresses. Even less if it is a hot summer. This is a direct result of C3 photosynthesis. Trees are not a proxy for temperature. They are a proxy for moisture.

It is the C4 species that grow best in summer when temperatures are higher and moisture is lower. Thus your lawn (c3) grows fastest in the spring, and crabgrass (c4) takes over in the summer.

I remember having an argument with a warmer about the Medieval Warm period and how the Greenland Ice core records show Greenland at least was warmer than the “present” time (2000? 1998? whatever). A good bit warmer. I was told you cant take Greenland as a proxy for world temperatures. However it seems you can take one tree in Yamal.
It is no wonder that scientists are concerned.

It’s heartening to see Andrew Montford, who explicates these issues better than anyone, getting his work in front of a much wider audience. Thanks also to Harold Ambler, with whom I’m not quite as familiar, although if Andrew is working with him, that tells us a lot.

One of the larger influences upon the tree ring growth of any single tree in a forest is the amount of competition for sunlight from adjacent trees. A grove of young saplings that are only pencil sized in diameter might have 5,000 to 10,000 trees per acre. As they all grow, the healthier, best positioned, trees grow a bit faster, overtopping nearby competitors. Those competitors eventually die off.

If several competitors are overtopped and die off in a short period, the overtopping tree will show a significant increase in tree ring growth for a time as it rapidly expands its crown into the crown space of its dead competition. (According to Briffa, that will be a warm period.) Eventually, however, that same tree will be faced with more competition, as the crowns of trees farther away begin to compete for its sunlight. By that time, the population per acre could be down to 500 to 1,000 trees per acre.

The same process recurs, only this time the trees that are being overtopped and dying off as a result might be 2 to 4 inches in diameter, rather than pencil-sized. Perhaps the initial tree discussed here doesn’t make it, in that round, but assume that it does. Until its competition is again bested, its tree ring growth will have steadily narrowed due to the surrounding competitors impinging upon its crown and stealing some of the available sunlight. (According to Briffa, this would be a cold phase.)

Then our winning tree’s crown again crowds out its nearby competitors, and its own crown is able to expand into the newly-opened spaces left by the dead and dying competitors, and tree ring growth accelerates once again. (Creating yet another Briffa warm period.)

Of course, virtually none of this process is temperature dependent. Granted, tree ring growth will accelerate when the weather is warmer (to a point, as one commenter stated), but to determine whether that has happened, one must examine a lot of tree rings in a single area, to sort out the overtopping process described above. By examining many trees, you can control for the overtopping effect because the weaker, overtopped, trees will also show greater tree-ring growth during the warmer period relative to their usual growth rate. (Ironically though, Briffa did the opposite, cutting the number of trees to one, thereby ensuring that the overtopping effect cannot be sorted out from any other cause of growth.)

Ultimately, if a tree reaches 3 to 5 feet in diameter, and is still situated in a healthy stand of competitors, as is typical, it will find itself in a stand of mature trees numbering 10 to 30 trees or so per acre. If the number is high, its growth rings will be growing slowly, and vice versa. Thus, whether or not an adjacent tree dies will determine whether Briffa will find the succeeding decade or so to be warm, or cold. In a mature stand such as this, a severe weather event, one that takes down two or even three competitors at one time, could free up the surviving tree so that its tree rings grow substantially faster than previously for several decades. (Making it a perfect Briffa tree, but an extremely poor indicator of temperature.)

Many loggers, and certainly any forester, could have cleared this up for Briffa, had he asked, though perhaps he already knew all of this, and cherry picking was the objective, rather than science.

Ally E. says:This should be bread and butter to the MSM, they love a good tear-down political story. So where the F*** are they?
————————————-
Agreed, but the CAGW crowd have successfully framed such dissent as being akin to questioning gravity. Most journalists in the environmental field have gone entirely native – and many will have entered that area entirely because they were believers in the first place.
For any major newspaper or TV station to do a demolition job on CAGW would be to entirely trash the output of most of its journalists for the last decade or two and make the whole organisation look extremely gullible at best.
The political fallout for such a media outlet could also be dire as they would, in most countries, be blowing a hole in government policy (and angering a lot of wealthy advertisers to boot). How many editors of media outlets are going to risk that for a story they might be unconvinced about in the first place and would probably fear might be too technical for many of their readers to grasp anyway?
It’s a horrible Catch 22, most outlets won’t have the guts to go for the jugular of CAGW while ever that’s a risky thing to do – it probably won’t become a safe thing to do without a substatial proportion of the MSM taking it on in the first place.

Very sharp and well written article. Unfortunately the problem, again, remains the same: the vast majority of the population don’t know and will never hear of the tremendous work of McIntyre and several others including Watts for information dissemination, because the mainstream media (the biggest part of the problem) just won’t bother, let alone report more of the facts and less of the sensationalistic factoids out of official press releases from the authorities.

I find that this is all terriby discouraging. ….
________________________________
Why do you think there has been such a fuss about FOIA to get the raw data? Why do you think Phil Jones said he lost the raw data and why do you think New Zealand’s ‘leading’ climate research unit NIWA said A goat Ate my Homework.

We can suspect they are playing games with the data but if we do not have the raw data and the actual adjustments we can not PROVE they were unethical even though all adjustments are down for the past and up for the present.

The RC site is a model of Climate Science. The replies have been cherry picked to shown only the results that fit the theory. The Team runs the RC site as a model of how they report Climate Data. Only publish the results that show what you want to show.

Ferd Berple states: “Look at your garden. In the NH it is spring and most of the trees will have already grown noticeably since winter. They will grow very little more as summer progresses. Even less if it is a hot summer. This is a direct result of C3 photosynthesis. Trees are not a proxy for temperature. They are a proxy for moisture.”

While it’s true that most plants, including trees, put on significant top growth in the spring, is it true that trees also put on most diameter growth in the spring, i.e., tree ring growth? I doubt that is true. Early growth of trees is fostered by nutrient stored in the root system over winter. In summer, the top growth subsides and root growth is significant in many plants, including, I suspect, in trees. Over summer, tree diameter could, and I believe probably does, increase significantly.

“I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.”

Well and good- but the coin of the realm is consistency in methodology. It makes no sense that you find LESS trees that meet the above criteria the closer you get to the present, it should be much harder to find ideal trees in the past, you should have more samples of current trees than ancient trees. Briffa produced the opposite, and the question is why. He was demonstrably inconsistent on what trees he chose over different epochs, he needs to have an explanation for why. If he had loosened his criteria for the past that at least would make sense- lack of candidates. But he did the opposite, given a greater surplus of candidates he chose a smaller sample size.

Ferd Berple states: “Look at your garden. In the NH it is spring and most of the trees will have already grown noticeably since winter. They will grow very little more as summer progresses. Even less if it is a hot summer. This is a direct result of C3 photosynthesis. Trees are not a proxy for temperature. They are a proxy for moisture.”

While it’s true that most plants, including trees, put on significant top growth in the spring, is it true that trees also put on most diameter growth in the spring, i.e., tree ring growth? I doubt that is true. Early growth of trees is fostered by nutrient stored in the root system over winter. In summer, the top growth subsides and root growth is significant in many plants, including, I suspect, in trees. Over summer, tree diameter could, and I believe probably does, increase significantly.
——————————————————————————-
Rod, it ain’t necessarily so. That’s the whole point. Different trees grow in different ways, and that varies again under different conditions. They also grow differently at various stages in their lifecycle, for example with regard to root growth vs top growth.

It has been said many times, but I will say it again – without serious input from biologists – including active foresters – these guys are the equivalent of pimply youths in the basement shooting down opponents in virtual war games, and yelling “I won the war! “

Okay, so now Yamal has been discredited due to cherry picking. The North American bristlecone pine series by Graybill has also been discredited due to the work of Lena Ababneh. The Tijlander series has been conclusively shown to have been used upside down. If the reconstruction people cannot use any of those series, then there simply is no hockey stick. The peer review process has been shown to be a farce.

When we get into the instrumentation era most of the twentieth century rise is due to adjustments. All of the rise from 1998 is due to adjustments.

It sure would be nice to have more info regarding YAD061 (and other Yamal larches). The Yamal peninsula is not some pristine environment, devoid of other lifeforms and devlopment. Yamal has, more recently, been used extensively for reindeer herding and petroleum development. Is YAD061 being fertilized by reindeer droppings or urine? Is it near some type of structure for petroleum extraction or transport? In other words, have all extraneous effects been ruled out?
References: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=yamal+reindeer&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C29&as_sdtp=

I consider that it would be suitable for these errant scientists such as Briffa, who have purposefully contrived to mislead and basically do not know the difference between the truth and lies, to strip then of any degrees that they have. Reduce them in the ranks so to speak.

Gail Combs says – “We can suspect they are playing games with the data but if we do not have the raw data and the actual adjustments we can not PROVE …”

We deniers (eye rolls) need to quit playing by AGW claimers’ rules. Science mandates methods and guidelines be followed. We [SNIP: Only once per posting and only if accompanied by a /sarc tag. We are not adopting the term for ourselves. -REP] need to demand AGW players follow Science.
No data, No evidence, No work shown, No Science, No AGW.
And AGW players you don’t get more Taxpayer $$$$$ for “No”.

One tree’s worth of data to collapse western capitalism, one tree? Is it not a fact that when doing a survey of any type, The larger the sample the more likely it will be representative of the entire group. Paring down the sample when you don’t like the results is cherry picking. This behavior is unethical. Period.

As we all know, the UK’s Guardian newspaper is not the most accurate and reliable source when it comes to climate matters. However, this article from just over two years ago on Yamal, Briffa etc is a real doozy.

30 studies show that tree growth is closely correlated with CO2 levels:

A particular species of oak tree, for example, quercus quercus, will grow to the same size in the same amount of time in different temperature regimes. Thus, temperature has little effect on growth. It is the increase in harmless, beneficial CO2 that is greening the planet.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States. It recognizes those individuals who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors”.[3] The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform.

He will never get it from the Obama administration. But a President Romney could do far worse than to make such an award in his first days in office. It would be an appropriate positive prelude to lowering the boom on a AGW climate crowd employed and funded by US Taxpayers.

“It is with great pleasure and gratitude that we award Steve McIntyre this medal for his selfless labor and endurance of invective from political and supposedly scientific opponents.

It is with some regret that we do not have Lead Medals to bestow upon those opponents today. This stage has not enough space. Rest assured my fellow Americans and freedom lovers around the world; they may not get lead medals, but they will receive pink slips.”

Who should be on the stage with Steve McIntyre at such a ceremony?
What other real prizes or medal has Steve earned?

First sentence: “Climategate, the 2009 exposure of misconduct at the University of East Anglia, was a terrible blow to the reputation of climatology, and indeed to that of British and American science.”

It is appropriate to make distinction between science and scientists. I frequently hear the argument that those who don’t believe in CAGW don’t believe in science when it is scientists misrepresentation of science that is at question. That distinction needs to be made more often and more forcefully.

“…is there anyone that believes you can get temperatures from tree rings?”

To take a tree ring core the ‘dendroclimatologist” has to drill a hole in the tree and extract the core. Maybe then he – or she – would be better off just throwing away the core and sticking a thermometer into the tree and measuring the temperature inside. At least that would be a true value.

lazyteenager;
I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.>>>>

Could you please describe the conditions and/or evolution that would result in a tree being insensitive to changes in precipitation? Pestilence? Disease? Animals foraging? Late frost?

And also, could you explain how the sensistivity to winter temperatures is incorporated into the tree rings?

David’s point is well-made, Lazy. The fundamental problem is that you, or anyone, would use the words chosen for some property regarding data that is the basis of a statistical study!

A very short lesson on statistical analysis. You have a dataset. You hypothesize “Widgets are a (linear, quadratic, logistic, gaussian, smooth) function of Frobbits” within the dataset (which is highly multivariate — Widgets might depend on Cogs as well in nontrivial ways, we just don’t know).

The default action — one that any scientist or analyst departs from only if they are in peril of their soul or are Bayesian divinities in possession of ex dei-quality Bayesian priors — is to take the goddamn data, put Frobbits on one axis, Widgets on another, look at the distribution of the scatter plot, and use regression to fit a (linear, quadratic… whatever) relationship, taking care to compute along the way because tells you whether or not there is any sort of credible linear relationship to be found.

What you do not do — again, unless you are in league with demonic forces — is pick a subset of the data to use when doing it. And here’s why: Because there are many other possibly confounding influences that might have affected Widgets, and you do not know what they are! Indeed, to know them (from the Widget dataset itself) you have to have already solved a more difficult problem than the one you are trying to solve. To correct for Cogs (which also affect Widgets) you have to have obtained things like the probability of Widgets given Cogs, and you really can’t get more information than now just plotting and analyzing Widgets as a multivariate probability distribution over Cogs and Frobbits. The only place where confounding can be corrected at the level of Widgets and Frobbits directly is to use exterior priors, exterior meaning that they come from an analysis using something (well, conditional probabilities) that you profoundly trust and that don’t come from the data you are already working with.

And that’s the rub. The entire tree-ring PCA statistical voodoo involves matching a “signal” evident in the data relating ring width to supposedly known temperatures and then locking in that signal in such a way that it permits past temperatures to be reconstructed. We know the late 20th century had a “linear” warming trend of thus and such — if we pick out tree ring series that exhibit the same linear trend over the same period, the idea is that these trees are the ones so situated that confounding influences “don’t work”. They are the “safe” trees to use, the ones that presumably encode the desired past signal with minimum “noise”. Mann and Briffa’s methodology already heavily weights such trees, which is why it disproportionately produces hockey stick shapes — it amplifies trees with a strong linear late 20th century blade trend, while leaving all of the flat uninteresting trees to produce the long stick.

Even so, if one applied this algorithm symmetrically all would be — not “good”, but perhaps still honest. That’s because trees with a strong linear trend up would be weighted the same as trees with a strong linear trend down across the proxy match region, and once again the laws of iid samping and unbiased inclusion of data would save the day as the ups and downs partially cancel, leaving (from enough samples, subject to a zillion unlikely hypotheses — I don’t think much of this approach) at least an unbiased result. Sadly, we have the twin peaks of “hide the decline” and now Yamal — not even this flawed algorithm with its largely unjustifiable steps can get an unbiased result when one deliberately leaves out series with a strong negative trend, and no algorithm is going to work if you choose the goddamn data you feed into it on any basis but “unusable” or the failure of statistical common sense (data way out of the normal bounds of nearly all of the other samples).

I “do” random number generator (hypothesis) testing and Monte Carlo. Suppose you have a source of perfectly random digits in the range 1-5. You turn it on and out pops the five-digit sequence 1 2 3 4 5. That doesn’t look too random to you, so you frown and set that number aside. Next out is 42122. Better, although having three 2s worries you. 32541 — now that looks random, we’ll put this in a pile to definitely use. 33322 — only two of the five numbers? Doesn’t look that random to me — reject.

After a few minutes of doing this sort of thing — applying any accept/reject heuristic to the data — you will have taken a perfectly good sequence of random digits, one where strings like 1 2 3 4 5 must occur with an easily computable probability (on average) and transformed it into something that looks “more random” to you but which would almost instantly fail statistical tests of randomness. And this, my friend, is the bete noir of both medicine and climate science — confirmation bias influencing data selection. If you reject all pieces of wood that don’t look like an elephant from a dataset of wood, eventually you can safely conclude that all trees are shaped like elephants. It won’t be a valid conclusion — a glance at a forest confounds it — but somewhere out there there are likely enough to be at least a few trees that do, and that’s all that you need.

This is why (I think) Steve Mcintyre twigged to MBH in the first place. If you just take the damn normalized/scaled tree ring data and average the regionally coarse-grained and surface-projected timeseries, you get what is probably already your best possible statistical result. Straight-up averaging of data means “I don’t know what might confound the result I hope to find, and using the (fairly weighted) average of everything averages in particular over my ignorance.” But when you do that with the original tree ring data (or the newer Yamal series plotted above) the noise leaves you with little discernible trend. Which is then, most likely (in a literal sense) the right answer. Little discernible trend.

Taking (really) trendless data and extracting a trended signal that just happens to agree with your prior beliefs and has the endless benefit of an eternity of grant renewals, pieces of Nobel Prizes, and a certain amount of notoriety if not fame — only the Devil could offer a deal like that one. Hence my initial observation — a scientist or statistician that departs from the rule of use all of the data including the part that disagrees with your personal biases or confounds your expected results does so only in peril of their soul.

not for this thread but wanted to share my experience with the website “Climate Progress”, they have deleted some of my comments which in fact were more cut and pastes from NOAA about the seas and the correct term not becoming more acidic but “less base” and from the US water board about the PH of the waters around the US .

I may be stupid, but can someone please explain how tree rings from one tiny area of the world show global warming (or cooling). Surely the tree ring data only shows what happens locally and then only during the growing season. I appreciate that the rings will reflect the length of the growing season, but they will also indicate other factors, like rainfall, CO2 concentration in the air, nitrates and phosphates etc. The temperature during winter could have fallen drastically, which would reduce the average annual local temperature significantly, so even if the width of the tree rings only demonstrated temperature, it would still not be a guide to average temperatures all year round.
Is there something I am missing??

Just a few corrections:- Briffa did not deline the data – it was not his to share and so he politely informed McIntyre that he would pass the request onto the Russian scientists, one of whom, Rashit Hentemirov, later wrote in response to McIntyre whining about 10 years of ‘stonewalling':

Steve has an amnesia. I had sent him these data at February 2, 2004 on his demand.

Ooops. The climategate mail did not reveal that ‘Briffa had prepared a much more broadly based, and therefore more reliable, tree-ring record of the Yamal area.’, it was a list of areas and grid boxes in which a reconstruction may be attempted. Ooops.

The graph, of course, cannot be ‘what the broad series would have looked like if Briffa had chosen to publish it.’ as it is based on more modern data supplied to McIntyre by Hantemirov.

Indeed, when Hantemirov, a professional dendrochronologist, saw what McIntyre had done with his valued data he pronounced himself ‘horrified’ by the ‘slipshod’ work, accused McIntyre of not performing due diligence, and characterised him as careless, grubby and dishonourable. Somehow this detail didn’t make it into Montford’s account, I can’t think why.

Remove these inaccuracies, the baseless speculations (‘Many of the players involved are desperate to sweep the scandal under the rug.’) and the weasel words (‘McIntyre has shown beyond the shadow of doubt that Briffa may have committed one of the worst sins’) etc and there’s not a lot left. Clearly anyone turning to Montford for a factual, complete and balanced account is making a category error. But we knew that.

The idea that the media will be going anywhere near this smelly slice of tripe is delusional.

LazyTeenager says:
May 24, 2012 at 11:12 pm
………………………..
I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.

[my bold]

The problem is Lazy how do we know? Suppose YAD061 was under a much larger neighbouring tree which suddenly died. Would YAD061 experience increased growth? Do the same trees in the same are respond differently to temperature? YAD061 sure did. Does this not strike you as odd given your statement?

As usual the authors of the article in the newspaper did NOT put up THE GRAPH which you have put up here (ie Yamal versus rest). The story is in the graph, without the graph no one will read the rest except some diehard skeptics like us. In the future when talking about Yamal ALWAYS put the graph there its irreplaceable

LazyTeenager says:
May 24, 2012 at 11:12 pm
(Quoting the article) “Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on.”
—————
I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.

Is Montfort unaware if this or is he just being sneaky?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If the only thing that influenced the trees’ growth was temperature (no water, not nutrients, etc.), wouldn’t you have a bunch of dead trees?
Are Briffa and Mann weather-tree channelers or weather-tree mediums?

Another thing if you followed the Astronauts statements at the ICCC conf please note that its was emphasized to not use the words “Climate Change” ever but “Human caused global warming”, which was the ORIGINAL theme changed by the AGW ers when they realized it may not warm. We are palying into their game by using CC.

Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on.
—————
I was under the impression that the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.

Is Montfort unaware if this or is he just being sneaky?
********************************************************************************************************************
I’m just curious; how could those influences have been avoided? Any ideas at all?

REPLY: Well, he’s “lazy”, what do you expect? Since he’s too lazy to do the work to figure this out himself, I’ll point out that the issue has already been covered on WUWT, and there’s no such thing supporting “lazy’s” assertions about “the trees chosen for analysis were geographically situated to avoid these kinds of extraneous influences and to be especially sensitive to temperature only.” Liebigs law makes this impossible.

Lazy Teenager says
“I was under the impression that the trees chosen for the analysis were geography situated to avoid these types of extrenous influences….”
=========================
It doesn’t matter where they are sitting….
Trees grow in the middle band of temperature…..too cold, they don’t grow….too hot they don’t grow

All a tree can tell you is how long or short that middle band was……

Say a tree grows between 50 and 80 degrees…….can it tell you the range of temp was -10 – 80?
or was it 50 – 110? was it an ice age and temps ranged from -10 – 80? or was it warming and temps ranged from 50 – 110?

Where are the lawsuits? If British Industry that paid for carbon offsets were to band together and sue the government and Briffa et al, for billions in fees paid out on fraudulent science.. would that not bring the issue to a head? The process of discovery, getting at the very basis of the goverment decisions(science used), should be enlightening.

*

I agree with Ed B. Where are the lawsuits? If the MSM won’t drag this ugliness into the open, lawsuits will. British industry, American industry, Australian industry, European industry – I don’t care who starts it. We need to see big industry step up to the plate.

I moved to my present property 14 years ago. The previous householder had planted several walnut tree saplings. Three of them are close to the perimeter of the property. They are about 15 feet apart. The one on the left is now about 20 feet tall. The one in the middle is about 35 feet tall, and the one on the right is about 10 feet tall. Just an observation.

PS I never get any walnuts because the ******* squirrels get them first.

At what point should the players in the CAGW scheme stop drawing a salary and be required to reimburse the public funds ‘earned’ while pushing a dishonest (I’m avoiding a better description here) activist agenda.

What is Briffa’s salary? What was Mann’s salary at UVA? What is it now? What was and is Phil Jones salary? The other players? I believe a lot of the UVA professors make in excess of a quarter of a million dollars per year. Some are approaching a half a million dollars per year.

There was an FOIA filed with UVA to release the salary records. UVA would not release the records but the state of VA was ordered to do so and are public now Google it! How much did Mann make? Is there info on Briffa? It would make economic sense to earn a half a million dollars per year and pay out as much as even half that in attorney fees. Maybe not save credibility but keep the salary coming in as long as possible. Maybe even get a whitewash acquittal. Something is very wrong with the academic system. It is a sad time in academics as well as science.

“Briffa’s decision to publish an alarming but unreliable version of the Yamal series — instead of a more reliable and thoroughly unremarkable one — has been the talk of the climate blogosphere, with many prominent commentators openly speaking of dishonesty.”

I don’t know whose choice of trees is correct, Briffa, who is an expert on tree rings, or the so called “skeptics” of AGW who have made the issue a cause celebre. It is incorrect to claim that Briffa has really hidden anything. In 1998 he and some coworkers published a paper which described the complex of factors that influence the formation of tree rings, and the paradoxical problem of the changes in tree ring growth patterns in recent years.

“However, a dramatic change in the sensitivity of hemispheric tree–growth to temperature forcing has become apparent during recent decades, and there is additional evidence of major tree–growth (and hence, probably, ecosystem biomass) increases in the northern boreal forests, most clearly over the last century. These possibly anthropogenically related changes in the ecology of tree growth have important implications for modelling future atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Also, where dendroclimatology is concerned to reconstruct longer (increasingly above centennial) temperature histories, such alterations of ‘normal’ (pre–industrial) tree–growth rates and climate–growth relationships must be accounted for in our attempts to translate the evidence of past tree growth changes.”

I don’t see any work on the part of the “skeptics” in the blogosphere which deals with the issues described in Briffa’s paper. Not all tree rings are created equal.

It seems to me that claims of dishonesty are uneducated utterings of conspiracy theorists. Some people who oppose the idea of AGW are trying to make the Yamal chronology into the lynchpin of the theory of AGW, which it is not. That accounts for the lack of interest outside of the climate “skeptic” blogosphere.

Eric Adler;
I don’t see any work on the part of the “skeptics” in the blogosphere which deals with the issues described in Briffa’s paper. Not all tree rings are created equal.>>>>

LOL. I read that paper. Briffa admits that over the last half a century tree rings have NOT followed the temperature record. Then he muses that this must be because of anthropegenic factors that were absent for the 900 years previous to the temperature record, so the rest of the reconstruction is probably OK.

You have it exactly backwards. We’re not avoiding the issues that Briffa brings up in that paper, THOSE ARE SOME (NOT ALL) OF THE ISSUES WE ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT!

Nice misdirection attempt, but you can’t point at something we’ve complained is black and scream “itz black! why won’t you admit that it is black?”

[snip – I’m tired of your insults to Steve McIntyre, and the insults in general you post on other blogs. Yes, I read them. Revise it or take it elsewhere Mr. Clarke. Be as upset as you wish. – Anthony]

It seems to me that claims of dishonesty are uneducated utterings of conspiracy theorists. Some people who oppose the idea of AGW are trying to make the Yamal chronology into the lynchpin of the theory of AGW, which it is not. That accounts for the lack of interest outside of the climate “skeptic” blogosphere.
==================================================
lol, no it isn’t the lynchpin of CAGW theory, but it is instructive. Dendrophrenology is utterly and totally destroyed in the skeptic blogosphere. That alarmists still vigorously defend it simply illustrates many, many things. First and foremost, it demonstrates who are and who aren’t the scientific literate. The fact that alarmists refuse to even critically exam the mountains of evidence against being able to divine temps from tree rings simply shows that CAGW never was a question of science. But, let’s not pretend dendrophrenology isn’t one of the tenets the dogma rests upon. Consider the ramifications of the alarmists finally admitting that dendrophrenology is a faux science. That is the lynchpin of CAGW theory. It exposes the “scientists” and defenders of such nonsense as either charlatans or incompetents and likely both. For fun and informative debunking of even the most base part of dendro, go and here andhere.

ok Eric, here’s a project for you…
Since Briffa admits that his tree rings fall apart when CO2 levels started rising…..
then we know that CO2 levels were so low they limited growth of trees..C3’s, the CO2 will keep decreasing after the inferior limit of the C3 plant, until it reaches the C4 inferior limit.

We know that when levels are low, they will jump around more….

Was Briffa really reading temps from his tree rings?…..
…or was he reading CO2 levels fluctuating between El Nino and La Nina events?

For those not familiar with Harold Ambler, his book “Don’t Sell Your Coat” is informative and entertaining. He does what the majority of modern journalists are unable or unwilling to do – actual research and looking at climate issues with some informed historical perspective. I would encourage you to check it out.

One Tree Ring to rule Yamal,
One Tree Ring to find them,
One Tree Ring to bring Yamal,
and in the darkness bind them.
Bruce Cobb
nice…….

I remeber when I learned, from Anthony on this site, that the Yamal data set contained ten trees and that one of them was radically different from the rest yet was included in the data. It was when the the scales fell from my eyes. I had naively thought that scientist all across the the world had common sense and exersised it. Ahhh…those were the days.

I was challenged to provide references for my assertions posted above. I did so, and they were snipped. Unlike the original post everything I wrote was factual and supported by references. Nothing I wrote was offensive to Steve McIntyre – unless the truth hurts.

So much for the conservative belief in ‘freedom of expression’…
REPLY: Oh please. Feel free to resubmit it, facts only, sans your insults. Otherwise it will be snipped again. – Anthony

Eric Adler says – “I don’t see any work on the part of the ‘skeptics’ …”

I don’t see any data, evidence, or work in your quote from Briffa & his cohorts’ 1998 published paper. What I do see is un-backed remarks. Along with the perusal AGW scam words of “possibly”, “most”, “probably”, “implications” “modelling”, “attempts”, and “translate”.

Eric Adler says – “I don’t know whose choice of trees is correct,”
For you own much needed education on the un-science of Briffa’s picky-choosey tree rings, see: “rgbatduke says: May 25, 2012 at 10:48 am”.

I was challenged to provide references for my assertions posted above. I did so, and they were snipped. Unlike the original post everything I wrote was factual and supported by references. Nothing I wrote was offensive to Steve McIntyre – unless the truth hurts.

So much for the conservative belief in ‘freedom of expression’
=============================================
Phil are you pretending to be an idiot or are you blinded by your advocacy? So and so said something about somebody and you’re going to describe that as truth? Yes, Hentemirov said those things.

It seems pretty clear to me, that Hentemirov was talking about a different set than what McIntyre was but don’t let that interfere with your delusional definition of “truth”.

Eric Adler says:
May 25, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Some people who oppose the idea of AGW are trying to make the Yamal chronology into the lynchpin of the theory of AGW, which it is not.

No, but it *is* the lynchpin of the hockey stick graph, and that was the lynchpin in Gore’s Powerpoint™ show, and that was the lynchpin of the media’s buying into the AGW hypothesis lock, stock, and barrel and the education mafia’s rationale for pushing “the science” down kids’ throats worldwide.

That accounts for the lack of interest outside of the climate “skeptic” blogosphere.

What accounts for the lack of interest is the lack of media exposure, and the lack of media exposure is due to the fact that most of the “mainstream” outlets are in the AGW tank.

How does a single tree from a single region of Russia represent global temperatures? Would you accept the temperature record of my home town going back to the early 1800’s as evidence of global temperatures as well? If so, the great news is there’s no hockey stick in that series as well. The evidence is clear: we aren’t doomed. The future looks fine and we can continue to enjoy the benefits of cheap and reliable energy.

Good points Eric Adler. It is because of the work of people like Mr. Briffa that the limitations of tree rings as temperature proxies are understood. People like Mr. Briffa do actual work and advance the knowledge of the world through this work. This is in opposition to those who can only criticize others work without offering any new understanding or putting forth any new work.

davidmhoffer says:
May 25, 2012 at 9:50 pm
Just curious. Could you explain how having Hentemirov’s data would tell McIntyre which portions of it Briffa used and which portions he didn’t? Or how he weighted it? In which time periods? etc?
===========
That is simple. The purpose of statistics is to allow a sample to ACCURATELY represent the whole. Thus, if Briffa’s statistical method is correct, ALL statistically correct methods will give the same answer as Briffa’s, within the limits of the error bars. If not, then Briffa’s methodology is not statistically correct.

Say for example we took the GISS temperature record for the past 100 years. From that we took the temperature records for the 10 cities on earth that best matched the global average for the past 10 years. Would you think it is statistically correct to then assume that the records for those cities would also be the best match for the global average for the past 100 years?

Is it not more likely that those 10 cities simply matched the global average for 10 years by accident, and a different 10 cities would be a better match going back 100 years? It is a simple matter to test this statistically. Anyone that has worked with statistics already knows the answer.

Yet, this is the methodology used by climate science. They select those trees that best match the global average for the past 150 years, and assume they are the best proxy for the past 1500 years. Without ever having tested the methodology to see if it statistically valid.

This is the problem with the tree ring circus called climate science. It is based on bogus statistics. Given the tactics of climate scientists worldwide to not release their data or methods it certainly seems likely that they are well aware that their methodology will not hold up under scrutiny. Thus they are fighting every step of the way to protect their reputations and careers.

skeptical;
sceptical says:
May 26, 2012 at 3:51 am
Good points Eric Adler. It is because of the work of people like Mr. Briffa that the limitations of tree rings as temperature proxies are understood.
>>>>>>>>>>>>

I think we need a word for trolls that work in teams. One trolll drops in, makes some points that promptly get shredded by commenters, but along comes a different troll to compliment the first one while blithely ignoring the fact that the first troll’s comments have already been exposed as drivel.

You are obviously unaware that the so-called ‘work’ of Briffa, Mann, et al, stands the previous century of climatological study on its head? It is all new fabrication, completely at odds with everything I have read over the previous fifty years. It is an attempt to rewrite history, at ignoring direct observation. Go to any mountain range whose height exceeds trees’ ability to survive. Notice the dead trunks well above the current treeline. Guess what, it used to be warmer, quite a bit so for a long time to get that dead trunk there. Craig Loehle does honest work: http://i39.tinypic.com/2q3arlw.jpg . That pathetic purple squiggle is the HS. Liu’s study 2011, very similar to Loehle, again with the HS in purple:http://i40.tinypic.com/35c4bw9.jpg . Lest we not forget, the IPCC’s 1990 graph which did agree the the previous decades of climatology: http://i39.tinypic.com/bgemm9.jpg , and certainly did not support the anthro/CO2-driven climate scam. Thus the past need be rewritten to perpetrate this fraud.

Phil Clarke wrote: …when Hantemirov, a professional dendrochronologist, saw what McIntyre had done with his valued data he pronounced himself ‘horrified’ by the ‘slipshod’ work, accused McIntyre of not performing due diligence, and characterised him as careless, grubby and dishonourable.

When you parse what Hantemirov said, he makes no specific criticism of McIntyre’s work, nor did hecontradict or dispute the topic at hand, Steve’s Polar Urals plots (generated from the data Hantemirov had supplied). No, Hantemirov’s “critique” is simply a rude, dare I say childish, assertion.

Which is fitting, as the “TEAM’s” overall dissatisfaction of Steve has mostly to do with his understanding of their statistical tricks, and his dogmatic insistence that the CRU show respect for the scientific method (particularly replication) and to obey the laws of the UK (a decidely low bar to clear for publicly funded scientists).

As for integrity and good faith, McIntyre sent a polite e-mail to Hantemirov following the latter’s angry post, asking for specifics, apologising for not putting his code on the specific blog thread, and then adding full code snippets to the article (a trivial act, as a quck search of CA would have turned up Steve’s methods in numerous places, because Steve respects openness and transparency). McIntyre’s efforts at delving more deeply into Hantemirov’s criticisms went unrewarded, as Hantemirov didn’t respond, either in the thread or by e-mail to Steve.

Here’s my take on the Hantemirov comment. Hantemirov’s initial contacts with Steve (during which he supplied Steve with the data), were polite and professional. But his very next comment, only days later, was rude, angry and disorganized. To me this suggests that following Steve’s Yamal posting, the “TEAM,’ now embarrassed, jumped all over Hantemirov’s ass for having given aid and comfort and data to the enemy, thereby making it socially and professionally necessary for Hantemirov to make a big show of condemning McIntyre to maintain his status within the group.

Here is Osborn’s reply to McIntyre’s request FOI request based on his 2006 email

Firstly, the email identified as 1146252894.txt refers to groups of trees, to
temperature data from the regions where the trees were sampled, and to a
future plan to process the measurement data from the groups of trees to
produce proxy series and many bootstrap estimates of these series. It is only
an inference that a regional chronology was later produced for the URALS
group of trees

Regional chronologies have subsequently been produced from various data
in the ‘greater Urals’ area of northern Siberia,

But for some reason, our auditor only reproduced the first half of the sentence. Here is the full thing

Regional chronologies have subsequently been produced from various data
in the ‘greater Urals’ area of northern Siberia, and one of those might bebased on the URALS group of trees referred to in the email. (My bold).

Mickey Reno: When you parse what Hantemirov said, he makes no specific criticism of McIntyre’s work

Are you serious? Here’s the verbatim text: Steve, I’m horrified by your slipshod work. You did not define what you compare, what dataset used in each case, how data were processed, and what was the reason for that, what limitation there are, what kind of additional information you need to know. Why didn’t you ask me for all the details? You even aren’t ashamed of using information from stolen letters. Do carelessness, grubbiness, dishonourableness are the necessary concomitants of your job?

Seems to me however you ‘parse’ it this is a damning criticism of McIntyre’s lack of definitions, description of data provenance, pre-processing, selection etc etc. Sure he listed his raw source code, but this just underlines the futility of the ‘auditing’ approach to doing science. It tells us nothing of the selection criteria, limits, pre-processing and so forth. McIntyre posted the day after he recieved the data, and before consulting with Hantemirov. In his haste to get another non-hockey-stick plot out there he clearly failed to do the kind of ‘due diligence’ that he demands in others.

Phil Clarke;
The data from Briffa’s ten trees is posted in the article above. Are you of the opinion that the data from these trees accurately represents the hocky stick graph produced from them by Briffa?

If I may restate my question another way, if we put these ten graphs on an episode of Sesame Street and played the “one of these things just doesn’t belong here” game, do you think that the average 8 year old could not spot the problem?

Phil Clarke;
When local temperature records are compared to the Yamal data, it is clear that the trees were not responding in any way shap or form to local temperatures. Is it your position that a mechanism exists by which these trees respond to global temperatures, but not the actual temperatures that they are experiencing?

Phil Clarke;
I have read the literature, and I’ve also read Lucy Skywalker’s investigation of the local temperature records. The local temperature records don’t match.

But you failed to answer any of the direct questions I asked you, all you managed to do was point me back at Briffa’s own paper in which he neglects to mention the very issues I asked you about. Nice attempt at a misdirect.

Now answer the questions directly, or look foolish, your pick.

How about one more? What is 2+2?
(I figure I gotta lob him one he can actually answer without looking silly)

, all you managed to do was point me back at Briffa’s own paper in which he neglects to mention the very issues I asked you about

The issue was your unsupported assertion that the Yamal proxies do not match regional temperatures. Briffa deals with this in section 5; Summing the appropriate
local pentad totals (pentads 38–42 for Fennoscandia, 27–37 for Yamal and 34–38 for Avam–Taimyr;figure 6), it is clear that the temperature/tree-growth relationship is strong and stable through time

When I want to read more about crystals and unicorns, I go to Lucy’s site. Meanwhile I get my science from the literature, rather rather than bloggers who do not even reveal their real name….

[Moderator’s Note: Don’t try that again. David M. Hoffer is a real name and is the name of the commenter using it. If you have evidence otherwise, present it, else apologize to Mr. Hoffer. -REP]

Well, I’ve demonstrated above that chartered accountant Montford is more than capable of inaccuracy, and I’m not sure what a discussion of the route into publication of a particular paper many years before the first Yamal paper was even published has to do with the topic at hand. However the ‘Jesus paper’ is one long exercise in misdirection away from the fact that Wahl and Amman showed that McIntyre’s criticisms of MBH 98/99 had a completely negligible impact.

Montford’s screed revolves around his proposal that ‘r-squared’ is a meaningful measure of skill for a climate proxy. If say, that was not the case, then there’s not a lot of point to his article. Odd thing is, that was pretty much what the National Academies of Sciences DID say in their investigation into climate reconstructions:-

The squared correlation statistic, denoted as r2, is usually adopted as a measure of association between two variables. Specifically, r2 measures the strength of a linear relationship between two variables when the linear fit is determined by regression. However, r2 measures how well some linear function of the predictions matches the data, not how well the predictions themselves perform. The coefficients in that linear function cannot be calculated without knowing the values being predicted, so it is not in itself a useful indication of merit. (Page 92)

So Montford has it wrong again, whether through ignorance or intentionally does not really matter. I think anyone relying on an accountant’s blog for complete and unbiased information is the one being ‘naive’.

In that case my apologies. I am rather surprised, though, that you would agree that anonymous bloggers like Tamino and Eli Rabbet are not credible.

I certainly would not advocate treating any blog, whether Steve’s, Anthony’s, Josh’s or Grant’s as a primary source. Lucy’s website is notable for the fact that to accept her version of reality, one has to reject a huge corpus of published science. Whereas both Eli and Tamino have contributed to said corpus, under their real names.

[REPLY: The only reason you know that Tamino and Eli have “contributed” is because they were “outed”. You have no idea who “Lucy Skywalker” is do you? As for “primary source”… better check the definition again. McIntyre and Watts ARE primary sources and they have blogged and published under their real names. -REP]

What you’ve demonstrated is a willful disregard for the main issues being brought your attention, misdirection, and dismissing out of hand the work of others because they are just bloggers posting under a handle. Whine all you want but at day’s end:

1. Lucy Skywalker points the reader at the exact data from the exact local weather stations in question. Anyone who doesn’t trust a blog post is welcome to check the data themselves (which I did). Anyone who bothers to read her work will soon find out just how carefully researched and detailed it is.
2. You haven’t answered the direct questions I asked of you.

Your defense of Briffa’s work seems to amount to linking to articles by Briffa. You’ve even linked to an article by Briffa where he admits that there are factors governing tree growth that cause divergence from the temperature record, and he doesn’t know why! How dense do you think people are?

Go back and look at the ten graphs.

One of these things just doesn’t belong here
One of these things just isn’t the same

When Sesame Street level reasoning can expose the stupidity for what it is, are you certain you still want to defend it?

Phil Clarke says:
May 26, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Mod – I was referring to ‘Lucy Skywalker’ – not David. I’m guessing that is not her given name….>>>

Anyone else notice that when confronted with an issue that he has an easy answer to, Phil Clarke responds within minutes? But when confronted with the difficult questions that I’ve asked of him (which he still hasn’t answered) if he responds at all it takes hours. I’m guessing that he isn’t actually familiar at all with the subject matter, and so has to run off and do research, or think through how he is going to direct attention away from the issues.

Would someone with a simple interest in the subject go to those lengths? Would someone with a simple interest in the subject continue to expose themselves as nothing more than a manipulative sycophant relying on misdirection and obfuscation to cloud the issue rather than bring any understanding to it? Does Phil Clarke even believe a single think he writes?

He’s now reverting to the most classic of paid troll ploys, which is to suggest that what someone writes cannot be trusted because they are an accountant…. or they write under a handle…. or that their work isn’t published in a journal. To all of this I respond:

One of these things just doesn’t belong here
One of these things just isn’t the same

“…the ‘Jesus paper’ is one long exercise in misdirection away from the fact that Wahl and Amman showed that McIntyre’s criticisms of MBH 98/99 had a completely negligible impact.”

A “completely negligible impact”?? ^That is proof of Mr. Clarke’s delusion.^ McIntyre & McKittrick absolutely destroyed the credibility of MBH98/99, and of Mann08 [the upside-down Tiljander proxy]. Only a true believer like Clarke has drunk enough Kool-Aid to blind him to M&M’s total destruction of Mann’s cherry-picked fantasies.

Mann and Briffa hide out from any debate, for the simple reason that their claims are based entirely on repeatedly falsified pseudo-science. Planet Earth is debunking every conjecture they have made. NONE of Mann’s globaloney predictions have panned out. Not a single one of them.

The ultimate Authority — Planet Earth — is falsifying Michael Mann’s silly conjectures. But Phil Clarke has drunk the Kool Aid, so he doesn’t understand what the planet is telling everyone else. Thus, Clarke appeals to false authorities, and ignores the only real Authority.

Can I cherrypick too? I’m going with YAD121 as the one responding only to temperature and ignoring all other variables. *looks at YAD121* No alarming hockeystick…. Cool! Problem solved. We can all stop worrying now. glad thats behind us. Anything else?

By literature, you mean Climatologists’ peer (fellow AGWers) reviewed articles on Global Warming that are propagandized by the MSM.?

By science, you mean taxpayer funded Climatologists (AGWers): who refuse to fully disclose their data (owned by Taxpayers), who refuse to show their work (paid for by Taxpayers), who refuse FOIAs (despite working for Taxpayers), who hide the declines (deceive Taxpayers), and who have difficulties with ethics and morals (Gleick It).?

Phil Clarke says – “Lucy’s website is notable for the fact that to accept her version of reality, one has to reject a huge corpus of published science.”

Like AGWers “huge corpus of published science” is settled science, fact or reality, NOT!

When are AGWers going to get ‘IT’ that Climatologists and AGWers lost their credibility***, and AGWers so called “peer reviewed papers” (published science) are meaningless** outside AGWers’ circle, other than perhaps good for pointing out AGWers goofs or frauds?

When are AGWers going to admit that “IT” was all about get taxpayer funding for job security, career building, new lab & computer equipment (aka new toys), cushy positions, and IPCC/AGW meetings & conventions (aka luxury party vacations)?

**AGWers started out with man-made CO2 being “THE” cause of claimed “Global Warming”. When CO2 was shown to lag behind changes in temperatures, AGWers morphed the tactic of their CO2 scam by trying non-sense like CO2 amplification. When “Global Warming” was found not to be occurring (thanks Mother Nature for – in your face decline), AGWers once again morphed the tactic of their CO2 scam to Climate Change. Despite CO2 continuing to rise and temperatures declining, AGWers have continued and are once again morphing the tactic of their ongoing CO2 scam to “Dirty Weather”. (What ever happened to Weather is not Climate decries by AGWers?) Not to be out done, the U.N. has decided to change the tactic of ongoing CO2 scam to SOS-FUD (saving our species from unsustainable development).

Wrenching the thread back onto topic, and ignoring the ad hom nonsense.

Montford said Briffa declined to provide the data – no, he passed the request on to the actual data owners, who provided it to McIntyre despite his assertions to the contrary.

Montford said Briffa and the CRU calculated a ‘more reliable’ Yamal chronology, but this is based only on a misreading of an internal email. There’s no evidence whatsoever for this and plenty to the contrary.

In ‘Caspar and the Jesus paper’ Montford asserts that r2 is a key measure of proxy skill, and bases his insinuations of malpractice around this, contrary to the NAS assessment.

And above Montford asserts:-McIntyre has shown beyond the shadow of doubt that Briffa may have committed one of the worst sins, if not the worst, in climatology — that of cherry-picking data

But this is NOT what McIntyre showed. We know this because well, because McIntyre said so

It is not my belief that Briffa crudely cherry picked. My guess is that the Russians selected a limited number of 200-400 year trees – that’s what they say – a number that might well have been appropriate for their purpose and that Briffa inherited their selection

ORLY? April 2012 was the globe’s 5th warmest April on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). NASA rated April 2012 as the 4th warmest April on record. April 2012 global land temperatures were the 2nd warmest on record, and the Northern Hemisphere land surface temperature was 1.74°C (3.13°F) above the 20th century average, marking the warmest April since records began in 1880.

….Anyone else notice that when confronted with an issue that he has an easy answer to, Phil Clarke responds within minutes? But when confronted with the difficult questions that I’ve asked of him (which he still hasn’t answered) if he responds at all it takes hours. I’m guessing that he isn’t actually familiar at all with the subject matter, and so has to run off and do research…..
____________________________
Oh I am sure WUWT has paid trolls and Trojan Horses. They each seem to be assigned a particular field of interest that they will defend no matter what, just like the Black Knight => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno

Phil Clarke;
After misdirecting the conversation, you use the excuse of getting back to the main topic as a subterfuge to distract the reader’s attention from the direct questions you were asked, and which you still haven’t answered. You have not added a single sentence to the discussion of the science itself, only whined about who said what and when. I repeat:

1. How would having Hentemirov’s data allow anyone to figure out which of it Briffa used and which he didn’t? Or how he statistically wieighted each sample?

2. The graphs from the data of each of the ten trees are above in the article. Can you juustify in any way shape or form the average of those ten trees producing a final result shaped like only one of them?

3. Do you honestly believe that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth? If that were true, why not just put ten weather stations in Siberia and forget about the other 5,000+ weather stations plus all the satellite equipment?

4. The notion that trees respond only, or even primarily to temperature, is disputed by biologists, botanists and arborists alike. How is it that only in climate science do trees response only to temperature?

5. Local temperature records do not match the Yamal data. How is it that trees in Siberia track the average global temperature, but don’t respond to the actual temperatures they are exposed to? Your previous answer was a misdirect. Lucy Skywalker’s article identifies the weather stations closest to the sampling sites, and shows quite clearly that the trees don’t track the local weather stations at all.

6. Is Phil Clarke your real name?

7. How are you compensated for your efforts on this an other blogs? My contention is that you must be compensated in some manner, because it is unlikely that someone would go as far out of their way to dig up obscure and misleading statements designed to misdirect the reader and derail the discussion, and wind up looking repeatedly foolish doing so, unless they had some personal motivation driving their behaviour.

Phil Clarke says – “April 2012 was the globe’s 5th warmest April on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data …”

Four things:
1) 5th warmest April on record means little given the very very very short time span of global record keeping. Nothing like ignoring all previous climate changes of the earth, especially those before man walked upright.
2) NOAA is group in control of GHCN database, which has been selectively leaving out temperature data from weather sites. In 1980 there were more than 5380 weather stations being recorded, by 2011 there was just over 210 weather stations being recorded. Thus use of such data is like comparing Lemons to Cherries. Only a small amount of those 210 have continuous records worth consideration.
3) Throw in unexplainable Bias adjustments to GHCN raw temperatures and the UHI effect and you got Zip, Nada, Nothing, NULL.
4) Being 5th warmest April only requires April 2012 to be 0.001 degree hotter than all but four Aprils. Summary: Ho Hum.

I generally don’t respond to questions based on a false premise or straw man. First you have to correct the premise, then you have to answer the question, and life really is too short. However…

. How would having Hentemirov’s data allow anyone to figure out which of it Briffa used and which he didn’t? Or how he statistically wieighted each sample?

Well, an auditor could re-run the analysis with the data, if the output matched the paper one could assume it was in the same ballpark, if not he could publish. Or he could just ask. McIntyre did neither, just complained, with no suggestion that he had the data in his back pocket.

2. The graphs from the data of each of the ten trees are above in the article. Can you justify in any way shape or form the average of those ten trees producing a final result shaped like only one of them?

Why ten trees? Statistics sometimes throws out counter-intuitive results, sesame street notwithstanding. A commenter at CA named Tom P claims to have done the CRU analysis without TAD061 and gets a similar outcome (Code posted at CA in the first Yamal thread).

3. Do you honestly believe that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth? If that were true, why not just put ten weather stations in Siberia and forget about the other 5,000+ weather stations plus all the satellite equipment?

No I do not. Nor does anyone else.

4. The notion that trees respond only, or even primarily to temperature, is disputed by biologists, botanists and arborists alike. How is it that only in climate science do trees response only to temperature?

That is not a tenet of dendrochronology.

5. Local temperature records do not match the Yamal data. How is it that trees in Siberia track the average global temperature, but don’t respond to the actual temperatures they are exposed to? Your previous answer was a misdirect. Lucy Skywalker’s article identifies the weather stations closest to the sampling sites, and shows quite clearly that the trees don’t track the local weather stations at all.

I do not accept your premise. Who reviewed Lucy’s results, given that they contradict the published literature?

6. Is Phil Clarke your real name?

Yes. Elsewhere in the blogosphere I am pjclarke. No connection to the other ‘Phil C’ who posts here (or any other poster). I think real names are preferable though I understand some have legitimate reasons to remain anonymous.

7. How are you compensated for your efforts on this an other blogs? My contention is that you must be compensated in some manner, because it is unlikely that someone would go as far out of their way to dig up obscure and misleading statements designed to misdirect the reader and derail the discussion, and wind up looking repeatedly foolish doing so, unless they had some personal motivation driving their behaviour.

Now – your turn. Would you agree that I have identified, with evidence, three material inaccuracies in Montford’s post? If not, why not? Would you agree this casts doubt on his ability to
write an accurate and balanced account? As WUWT apparently wants to be taken seriously as a ‘primary source’, would you agree that the post should be updated or removed? Do you think this will happen?

Since you agree that 10 trees from Siberia, as stipulated by you above, do NOT represent global temperatures, then by your own admission, Briffa’s study is bogus. Arguing the many attempts at misdirection you continue to pursue is pointless given that you have stated that Briffa’s science is b*llsh*t. Since we agree that it is b*llsh*t, there is not reason to pursue the argument further. Thankyou for admitting that Briffa’s work is b*llsh*t.

3. Do you honestly believe that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth? If that were true, why not just put ten weather stations in Siberia and forget about the other 5,000+ weather stations plus all the satellite equipment?

To which Phil Clarke responded:
No I do not. Nor does anyone else.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL
ROFLMAO

There you have it. Phil Clarke says that not only does HE not believe that ten trees in Siberia can represent the average temperature of the earth, he takes it a step further and says nobody else does either!

One can only wonder of Phil Clarke has actually read or understood the claims made by Briffa that he purporst to defend, and then in two brief sentences, discredits.it completely.

No wonder poor Phil fears to venture into a discussion of the science itself! His only competancy is to claim that science only occurrs in journals and as soon as he ventures beyond that…. poof! nothing there bu hot air descending upon us from the lofty position he occupies at the top of the petard he has hoisted himself upon.

Phil says: “A commenter at CA named Tom P claims to have done the CRU analysis without TAD061 and gets a similar outcome (Code posted at CA in the first Yamal thread).”

I’ve heard of Michael Mann using a flawed PC analysis which takes large amounts of data and mines it for hockey stick shapes, but this is a new one to me. Without YAD061, there’s no hockeysticks left to mines for, or cherries left to pick. Phil (and this Tom P person), appear to be attempting to take us from Mann’s psuedo-science into some new territory. (psycho-science?).

For those still following along, here is a link to Lucy Skywalker’s guest post showing that the Yamal tree rings do NOT match local thermometer records.

Phil can whine all he wants about what the literature says and bloviate about Lucy’s credentials, but here’s the problem Phil has. OK, he already admitted that ten trees in Siberia could not possibly track global temperatures, so here is another problem that he has.

Anyone can read Lucy’s article and check to see if her assertions are correct by verifying the assertions themselves.

davidmhoffer says – “Phil Clarke; Since you agree that 10 trees from Siberia, as stipulated by you above, do NOT represent global temperatures, then by your own admission, Briffa’s study is bogus.”

Egg-xactly. Any legitimate scientist would not even consider defending Briffa’s study, let alone use any part of Briffa’s study as a part of his/her work. Yet, the AGW climatologists persists in circling the wagons to protect their taxpayer feedbag scam. And the AGWers wonder why they have lost the public’s trust. Ironically funny, how they claim to be smarter.

Phil Clarke says – “Well, an auditor could re-run the analysis with the data, if the output matched the paper one could assume it was in the same ballpark, if not he could publish.”

Oh please, that is total hogwash. First off, no one should be expected to play guess the subset of the data a supposed scientist might have used. In fact that is just an absurb suggestion. Second, the burden of proof is on the supposed scientist asserting his/her claim of science. No data, no work, no science, no proof. Third, you know that anybody outside the AGW clan is not going to get a paper countering AGW published/peer-reviewed because of the unprofessional, unethical, and un-scientific road blocks AGWers setup.

Phil Clarke says:
May 27, 2012 at 3:42 pm
David,
I am not aware of anyone claiming that the Yamal chronology is a good proxy for global temperatures. Could you give me a name?
thanks.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Briffa. Cited by Jones, Mann and others, not to mention the IPCC Really, you’ve got both feet stuck in your mouth right up to the knee caps and yet you continue on.

Phil Clarke says – “I am not aware of anyone claiming that the Yamal chronology is a good proxy for global temperatures. Could you give me a name?”

From my read on what you said below and quoting of Briffa; I would say the answer to your question is “Phil Clarke” and “Keith Biffa”.

Phil Clarke blogged – “The issue was your unsupported assertion that the Yamal proxies do not match regional temperatures. Briffa deals with this in section 5; Summing the appropriate
local pentad totals (pentads 38–42 for Fennoscandia, 27–37 for Yamal and 34–38 for Avam–Taimyr;figure 6), it is clear that the temperature/tree-growth relationship is strong and stable through time”

If the Mods and Anthony Watts will permit here a little side caring (slightly off topic).

This entire discussion on Briffa’s Yamal tree is a good example of AGWers misdirections to derail, discourage, and possibly seed some doubt with readers. The AGWers saturate discussions with baffling irrelevancy, claims of their expertise / authority, vague references (read all of this GW paper, then …), repetition of same old AGW claims (beating dead horse), attempts at personal attacks (flaming), unnecessary references to egghead nuances (aka nitpicking), and highbrow minutiae to where most readers give up trying to follow and understand the story and the direct discussion of said story. The AGWers goal is not to actually convince readers of AGW, but to keep readers from being enlightened to where they dismiss the claim of AGW (ignorance serves AGW).

davidmhoffer says – “How would having Hentemirov’s data allow anyone to figure out which of it Briffa used and which he didn’t? Or how he statistically wieighted each sample?”
Phil Clarke’s answer – “Well, an auditor could re-run the analysis …”

Easier said than done when you factor in Briffa didn’t include the metadata to go with the tree data as told: “Briffa had also thrown a rather larger spanner in the works though: while he had archived the tree ring measurements, he had not supplied any metadata to go with it — in other words there was no information about where the measurements had come from.” http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html
The other spanner was the data being stored in obsolete data format (used in era of punch-cards), without details or explanations of how to read the format.

One has to ask: Why are AGW proclaimed scientists being so cryptic, so secretive, so foot-dragging?
As a scientist, If the facts and your work back up your theory/claim: What is there to gain by refusing to show the facts and your work as a Scientist?

Which leads to a follow up question: Do the proponents of AGW really expect others to take such AGW proclaimed scientists (being cryptic, secretive, & foot-dragging) as professionals?

Darren : “I am not aware of anyone claiming that the Yamal chronology is a good proxy for global temperatures. Could you give me a name?”

From my read on what you said below and quoting of Briffa; I would say the answer to your question is “Phil Clarke” and “Keith Biffa”.

Phil Clarke blogged – “The issue was your unsupported assertion that the Yamal proxies do not match regional temperatures. Briffa deals with this in section 5; Summing the appropriatelocal pentad totals (pentads 38–42 for Fennoscandia, 27–37 for Yamal and 34–38 for Avam–Taimyr;figure 6), it is clear that the temperature/tree-growth relationship is strong and stable through time”

Which part of ‘local’ is giving you a problem?

So apparently it is Briffa who believes that that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth

But nobody has provided a shred of evidence to support this remarkable assertion. Also, while I took the time to answer questions, my little enquiry has not had the courtesy of a reply.

Really Phil? The IPCC and their cheer leaders have been showing both the Briffa and Mann hockey sticks as the poster child for proof of GLOBAL warming for YEARS! If they thought it was evidence of LOCAL warming only, why would they make such a fuss about it? Good lord man, you’ve stepped so deep into your own poop that you should be too embarrased to even show up here with any follow up remarks.

But keep going. Your assertion that Briffa’s work was only an indication of local, not global events is just fine with me. I shall trot it out as a quote from now own every time someone defends Briffa’s work. You’ve got a few more gems that you posted that make you look totally foolish as well, but that one’s a gem.

I’ve not answered your questions to me because the standard you have set is to be asked several times in succession before answering. When you have asked the appropriate number of times, I shall respond.

In the meantime, HEY EVERYONE! Phil Clarke claims that Briffaès Yamal study was NEVER meant to represent global temperatgures! That being the case, we can now quote Phil Clarke as saying that Briffaès study had nothing to do with global warming because it was only local. THANKYOU PHIL CLARKE FOR THAT GEM!

davidmhoffer says: @ May 28, 2012 at 1:15 pm
…..But keep going. Your assertion that Briffa’s work was only an indication of local, not global events is just fine with me. I shall trot it out as a quote from now own every time someone defends Briffa’s work. You’ve got a few more gems that you posted that make you look totally foolish as well, but that one’s a gem…..
_______________________________
Don’t you mean “Crown Jewel” and yes it certainly is one.

It has been fascinating to watch the acrobatics used to defend Briffa’s Yamal tree cores.

This is the winning post that shows Phil C is full of it. (go to the link comparing the trees to the local temperatures)
…………………………………………
Tallbloke says @ Lucy Skywalker did an excellent study of the local thermometer records against the tree ring proxy data here at WUWT a couple of years ago, I reposted it in response to Steve McIntyre’s recent revelations:http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/6355/
……………………………………….

I would just like to point out the over-riding fact that convinces me that Mann, Briffa and all the rest of the alarmist clique are lying through their teeth:

None of them will publicly debate their ideas with scientific skeptics.

If they are so sure they’re right, why are they all too chicken to debate the issue? The answer is, of course, that they’re trying to sell the world a pig in a poke. If they give an inch, their whole scare story comes crashing down, because one question will lead to another until everyone sees their scam.

So far, the only real evidence for AGW is that it amounts to very little, and all available data shows that the increase in CO2 has ben entirely beneficial: the planet is greening as a direct result of the rise in CO2 from a tiny 0.00028 of the atmosphere, to a still very minuscule 0.00039.

You are not making any headway in your arguments here, because you’re being an apologist and a finger puppet for the scientific charlatans who are feeding at the public trough. Try thinking for yourself for a change. Instead of nitpicking UN/IPCC reports, show us real, verifiable evidence of global harm due to the rise in CO2. If you can. Put up or shut up, Phil.

Phil Clarke – “So apparently it is Briffa who believes that that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth But nobody has provided a shred of evidence to support this remarkable assertion.”

Briffa’s work being associated with AGW and AGWers defense of Briffa and his work, provides the evidence you seek.

Phil Clarke – “my little enquiry has not had the courtesy of a reply”.
If this is which to you refer: “Would you agree that I have identified, with evidence, three material inaccuracies in Montford’s post?” “If not, why not?”
No, I would not agree.
Your so-called evidence is AGW SPIN, or excuse making. Briffa could and should have given McIntyre information as to which data he (Briffa) had used and why. Additionally, a separate write-up on the events runs counter to your so-called evidence.

But enough with the misdirections. Back to the topic.
Briffa’s work (cherry picking of trees) was not scientific, thus un-supportive of claimed AGW.
Briffa’s previous response as to how he picked the trees, “My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region …” sounds like unscientific data manipulation (or forcing a square peg into a round hole).

Phil Clarke – “So apparently it is Briffa who believes that that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth But nobody has provided a shred of evidence to support this remarkable assertion.”

For those who are thoroughly confused by Phil’s dodgy tactics, the relevance of those “10 trees from Siberia” is discussed here.

A good analogy is: that the Yamal series is one of a few cards that, when pulled, causes the entire AGW argument deck to collapse. (or at least the part of AGW argument that says 20th century wamring is unprecedented.)

I forgot to mention….PHIL….
The excerpt I quoted above from IPCC AR4 WG1 Chapter 6 features Briffa’s work repeatedly, both showing the graphs and also quoting from his papers, to explain the evidence for global warming. And the lead author of that chapter? Keith Briffa. So he quoted his own studies in explaining the evidence for GLOBAL warming. Not regional, not local, GLOBAL.

To think, all this pointless discussion, lost time, needless effort, bogus carbon regulations, and wasted Billion$ due to one ____ing Yamal Tree and BAD science from several AGW climatologists. The AGW debate is over, AGW never existed.

davidmhoffer says:
May 28, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Really Phil? The IPCC and their cheer leaders have been showing both the Briffa and Mann hockey sticks as the poster child for proof of GLOBAL warming for YEARS! If they thought it was evidence of LOCAL warming only, why would they make such a fuss about it? Good lord man, you’ve stepped so deep into your own poop that you should be too embarrased to even show up here with any follow up remarks.

It must be taking a while for the hot water tank to refill. He took a two-shower step into it…

IPCC AR4 WG1 6.6 “these data were later scaled using simple linear regression against a mean NH land series to provide estimates of summer temperature over the past 2 kyr ”

That’s in reference to Briffa’s Yamal series.

Wrong. The full IPCC quote Briffa (2000) produced an extended history of interannual tree ring growth incorporating records from sites across northern Fennoscandia and northern Siberia, using a statistical technique to construct the tree ring chronologies that is capable of preserving multi-centennial time scale variability. Although ostensibly representative of northern Eurasian summer conditions, these data were later scaled using simple linear regression …

Briffa 2000 is a multi-proxy study, of which the Yamal series is just one of many, the others being Tornetrask, Polar Urals, Taimyr, Yakutia, Jasper aka Alberta aka Athabaska, Mongolia and the Jacoby treeline composite. . rather more than ’10 trees’…. LOL. And the IPCC use this as just one paper out of many in conjunction with other multi-proxy studies in their figures.

So it goes. The assertion is made in the form of a Straw Man premise Do you honestly believe that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth?

To which the correct answer is and was: No I do not. Nor does anyone else.

Asked to provide evidence to support the assertion, the best we (finally) get is the IPCC citing a paper than uses Yamal alongside a raft of other series and composites to estimate NH temperatures.

There is no evidence to support the assertion, because the assertion is false. And other than a lame piece of handwaving (and the by- now- familiar insults), my question remains unanswered.

I’m with you Phil.
The Yamal series doesn’t represent global temperatures.
If you follow the two posted references above, you’ll find well documented and easily checked data showing they don’t represent local temperatures either.
If you want to cite the Polar Urals, I suggest you read through the thread on CA titled “What happened to the Polar Urals”
Yamal is not presented “alongside” a raft of other series. Read the citations. Many of those other series RELY upon Briffa’s Yamal paper. You can’t be “alongside” your own foundation. Talk about circular reasoning!
Many of those series have ALSO been discredited (see Polar Urals).
Trees rings can tell you how much the tree grew in the growing season of a given year. They cannot tell you what happened during the other 9 months of the year when they weren’t growing, they can’t tell you how much their growth was affected by temperatures that were too low or temperatures that were too high, they can’t tell you how much they were affected by changes in rainfall, late frost, insect infestation, foraging animals, disease, soil nutrients, competition from other plants, cloud cover variation, CO2 levels, humidity, and many other factors.

Briffa’s Yamal series has been one of the poster children for the hockey stick alarmism, and it is totaly bogus. The studies predicated upon it are equally bogus, they fall along with Yamal.

You can whine all you want about obscure references, couch your misleading and vague questions carefully designed to obfuscate the issue and misdirect attention from the core issues in as eloquent a language as you wish, it will change nothing if I answer your questions or not. The facts are above. Yamal is joke. Tree rings as a proxy for temperatures at a local, regional, or global scale is a joke. Trying to distract attention away from these core issues is clearly your goal, and even if you were right, it changes nothing about the facts of the matter.

Trees are not thermometers, and Briffa’s Yamal series is an egregious misrepresentation of his own data. It is falsified by the Sesame Street methodology:

One of these things just doesn’t belong here
One of these things just isn’t the same.

See ya on other threads buddy. I’ll have your quotes about Yamal not representing global temps handy. Thanks for pointing that out.

I’d like to add to David’s comments by providing a direct answer to Phil’s question:

“Do you honestly believe that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth?”

The answer is, obviously, no. No one in their right mind would think that 10 trees can tell us the average temperature history of the entire earth. But thank you, Phil, for making our point for us.

It does appear, however, that one single tree from Siberia is responsible for the distinct hockey-stock shape of the graph represented in around half of the studies made by the hockey team, and used by the IPCC. (The remaining studies are based on a few other trees.)

This is discussed here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.
And many, many, other places around the blogosphere over the past 5 or 6 years.
I suspect you may now revert to your standard talking point and complain that blogs are not “peer-reviewed” and don’t appear in prestigious journals like “Science” or “Nature.”

Here’s your response to that, in advance. That actual data used in Briffa (2000), a article which was thoroughly pal-reviewed by the Hockey-Team, can be found here. . Take a look, load it up in a spreadsheet, and view the data for yourself. There is one data-set in the shape of a hockey stick, Yamal. And, as we now see from the late release of the data, one single tree from Yamal, is shaped like a Hockey stick, YAD061.

But don’t fret, Phil! I know how you can help the team out. Get yourself an axe, move in to a cabin out in the hills, and start choppin’. I’m sure you’ll eventually find a tree or two with outer rings that are wider than the rings in the middle. You can than write a computer program that rigs the output to focus on your one tree, write a paper explaining how this proves AGW is real and alarming, and get it pal-reviewed. You’ll be famous! (Oh wait, someone already did that.)

I’d like to add to David’s comments by providing a direct answer to Phil’s question:

“Do you honestly believe that ten trees from Siberia are representative of the average temperature of the entire earth?”

The answer is, obviously, no. No one in their right mind would think that 10 trees can tell us the average temperature history of the entire earth. But thank you, Phil, for making our point for us.

It does appear, however, that one single tree from Siberia is responsible for the distinct hockey-stock shape of the graph represented in around half of the studies made by the hockey team, and used by the IPCC. (The remaining studies are based on a few other trees.)

This is discussed here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.
And many, many, other places around the blogosphere over the past 5 or 6 years.
I suspect you may now revert to your standard talking point and complain that blogs are not “peer-reviewed” and don’t appear in prestigious journals like “Science” or “Nature.”

Here’s your response to that, in advance. That actual data used in Briffa (2000), a article which was thoroughly pal-reviewed by the Hockey-Team, can be found here. . Take a look, load it up in a spreadsheet, and view the data for yourself. There is one data-set in the shape of a hockey stick, Yamal. And, as we now see from the late release of the data, one single tree from Yamal, is shaped like a Hockey stick, YAD061.

Bill Tuttle;
It must be taking a while for the hot water tank to refill. He took a two-shower step into it…
>>>>

I had dropped this thread, and then remembered that I didn’t respond to the above remark, so I’m back for one more comment.

Mr Tuttle, please be advised that you owe me a new keyboard. Your comment caused an unexpected splutter which was a complete waste of fresh coffee, much of which traveled to the keyboard driectly through my nose. Obviously, the person responsible for this disaster is you. The problem was made worse by the fact that I happened to have a shop vac at hand.

Yamal is not presented “alongside” a raft of other series. Read the citations. Many of those other series RELY upon Briffa’s Yamal paper.

You do your credibility no favours by making stuff up. There were 12 series presented the in IPCC Figure. Moberg used only high-frequency information from Briffa (2000), Mann and Jones (2003) used it as part of a composite, it was included in two other papers which certainly would not be much changed by removing it and not used at all in eight. Hardly ‘many’.

Thus, with the exception of Briffa (2000), the reconstructions shown by the IPCC (Figure 6) either do not use the Yamal record or they combine the Yamal record with many others and this reduces their sensitivity to the inclusion of any individual records. The IPCC then takes this aggregation one step further, by considering multiple reconstructions (Figure 6). The overall conclusions of the Palaeoclimate chapter in the IPCC report (Jansen et al., 2007) are not, therefore, strongly dependent on the Yamal record of Briffa (2000)

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, as Christopher Hitchins observed. Personally I find it amusing to watch the assertions slither away once supporting evidence is requested, and entertaining to observe how the self-proclaimed ‘sceptical’ cleave uncritically to the blog postings of a man not above a bit of selective quotation, as I demonstrated above, and whose work on this data was described as ‘slipshod’ and ‘careless’ by the professional scientist who collected and published (that word again) the data.

But there’s only so much amusement and entertainment a boy can take. Bye for now.

REPLY: Your constant defense of CRU on multiple blogs makes me wonder, who’s paying for your consulting business time? Surely you can’t be making any money in other consulting given the time you put forth on this topic. – Anthony

Given that this was an internal email, and that both correspondents were fully aware that nobody actually gets to ‘redefine what peer-review’ is, this is clearly hyperbole; the kind of jokey exchange that happens between colleagues in private in every organisation on the planet.

And, given that both papers were were in fact cited and discussed in the IPCC report (and have since pretty much sunk without trace, they weren’t very good), it wasn’t a particularly effective ‘conspiracy’ was it?

this is clearly hyperbole; the kind of jokey exchange that happens between colleagues in private in every organisation on the planet.

Nope, it’s the kind of exchange you’d expect between the low-rung flunkies working out of cubicles in the basement while crowing over the latest gossip. It’s a clear indication of lack of integrity and ethics, and a sign that the author of that email can not be trusted with the responsibility of peer reviewing journal articles, nor be trusted to carry out research without allowing his personal biases to infect the results.

Phil Clarke – “Given that this was an internal email, and that both correspondents were fully aware that nobody actually gets to ‘redefine what peer-review’ is, this is clearly hyperbole; the kind of jokey exchange …”

What a load of AGW and another example of AGWers misdirection to cover-up their Scam.
There is no joke or LoL in the statement “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow”.

*These can be difficult to find, one has been reported in the Yamal region of Siberia.

Note: For even better results, make a copy of the one hockey-stick data sample, than repeat steps 1 through 6 several times, using variations of the remaining data. Place multiple hockey-sticks together on the same graph, to give the impression of “repeatability” and “robustness”.